AZ-104 Exam Guide: What It Covers, Costs, and How to Pass

The AZ-104, Microsoft Azure Administrator, is Microsoft's associate-level certification for people who run Azure day to day. It covers five areas — identity and governance, storage, compute, networking, and monitoring — and expects real hands-on skill, not just definitions. You need a score of 700 to pass and get 100 minutes. Here is the full picture, checked against Microsoft's own pages.

What AZ-104 covers

Microsoft groups the exam into five skill areas:

• Manage Azure identities and governance — Microsoft Entra users and groups, role-based access control, subscriptions, policy, locks, tags, and cost management.
• Implement and manage storage — storage accounts, access and security, redundancy, blob storage, and Azure Files.
• Deploy and manage Azure compute resources — virtual machines, availability, scaling, containers, App Service, and templates in ARM and Bicep.
• Implement and manage virtual networking — virtual networks, network security groups, DNS, load balancing, and connectivity.
• Monitor and maintain Azure resources — Azure Monitor, alerts, backup, and recovery.

By weight, identity/governance and compute are the biggest areas at 20–25% each, storage and networking sit at 15–20%, and monitoring is smallest at 10–15%.

Notice the verbs. Where the Fundamentals exam asks you to describe things, almost every AZ-104 objective starts with configure, create, manage, or deploy. The exam tests whether you can actually operate these services.

Exam format: what's official, and where the popular guides disagree

Here is only what Microsoft actually states.

Microsoft gives you 100 minutes to complete the exam. That number is official.

The number of questions is not. Microsoft does not publish a fixed count for AZ-104, and it can vary. Search around and you will see confident claims of "40 to 60 questions" and other ranges — they disagree because none is an official figure. A safe expectation is roughly 40 to 60 items, but treat any exact number as an estimate. We would rather tell you it is unpublished than invent one.

The questions themselves go well beyond multiple choice: expect drag-and-drop, hot area (click the right spot on a diagram), yes/no sets, and case studies — a shared scenario you read once, then answer several independent questions about. It is a more interactive exam than Fundamentals, and we cover exactly what to expect in our guide to AZ-104 question types.

What score do you need

You need 700, on a scale that runs to 1000, to pass. One thing worth knowing: 700 is not "70% of questions right." The score is scaled — questions carry different weights, and some unscored items may appear — so aim comfortably clear of the line rather than counting questions.

How much does it cost

Microsoft prices AZ-104 by country or region, so there is no single global figure. The exact price for your location shows during scheduling through Pearson VUE. Because pricing is regional, we point you at the scheduling page rather than repeat a US-only number that may not match your country.

What experience do you need

There is no formal prerequisite — you can book AZ-104 without passing anything first. But "no prerequisite" is not "no experience expected." Microsoft's own audience profile expects you to be comfortable with operating systems, networking, servers, and virtualization, and to have worked with PowerShell, the Azure CLI, the Azure portal, ARM templates or Bicep, and Microsoft Entra ID.

If you are new to cloud, AZ-900 (Azure Fundamentals) is a gentler on-ramp, though it is not required. If you already administer systems or another cloud, you can go straight to AZ-104.

Is AZ-104 hard

Fairly, yes — it sits a clear step above Fundamentals. In our experience building the question bank for this exam, the difficulty is not breadth of trivia; it is that the exam asks you to make administrator decisions. Questions describe a situation and ask what you would configure, in what order, or why one option is wrong — the kind of thing you only get right if you have actually done it.

One honesty note: Microsoft does not publish a pass rate for AZ-104. Any site quoting an exact "pass rate" made the number up. What reliably predicts passing is hands-on time, not a statistic. We go deeper into who finds it hard, and why, in is AZ-104 hard.

How to prepare

Start with Microsoft's own free material: the learning paths on the exam page and the free practice assessment Microsoft provides. Work through the skills outline in the study guide so nothing on the blueprint is unfamiliar — then spend real time in the Azure portal doing the tasks it lists, because this exam checks that you can.

Then test yourself under exam-like conditions. Practice questions are the most honest signal of whether the material has stuck. That is why we built our AZ-104 practice exams against the exact skills outline above — every question traceable to the official Microsoft page behind it, real case studies included, and no dumps. Practice tests do not replace the hands-on work; they show you where you are not ready yet. For a week-by-week path, see our AZ-104 study plan.

Does it expire, and is it worth it

Unlike Fundamentals, this credential does renew. Azure Administrator Associate stays valid for 12 months, and you renew it at no cost with a short, open-book assessment on Microsoft Learn during the six-month window before it expires. Miss the window and it lapses, so put a reminder in your calendar.

As a credential, AZ-104 carries real weight with employers: it is a role-based certification that says you can run Azure, not just talk about it. It is a common next step after AZ-900 and a foundation for expert-level certifications like Azure Solutions Architect (AZ-305). For anyone building an Azure career, it is one of the most useful certifications to hold.